Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

I understand my right hon. Friend’s point, and I am now led to conclude that I was right to adopt my old career master’s advice to become a lawyer, rather than a history professor. However, in the light of a changed set of circumstances, it is my and many others’ view that the business rate can now be returned to local authorities—along with the safeguards that can sensibly be put in place—in order to avoid the abuse that my right hon. Friend refers to, and which I witnessed as a London borough councillor at that time. The targets issue is important, because micro-management through targets undermines local government’s degree of discretion. I take France as an example because it is the European country that I know best. Not only are major towns there able to raise much more of their revenue locally, but they are much freer from interference by central Government in how they deliver services. I accept the need for equity on a national basis, but often that is effectively traded off against the greater ability to choose local solutions to meet local problems and local issues. Not enough attention is paid to that. The police is a particularly good example, referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire. I serve on the Metropolitan Police Authority, and when I talk to police officers of all ranks in my constituency and elsewhere in Greater London, when I talk to our partners in the crime and disorder reduction partnership locally, and when I talk to people in our police and community consultative groups, it is a recurrent theme that we have far too many centrally imposed targets. Very often these are targets for crimes, for example, which are not the top priority in our local borough, but they have to be fitted into a national template. That diverts attention from dealing with local policing issues. The same applies in a number of other areas. A reduction in targets, as we propose in our amendments, seems not only to be right philosophically, but to go with the grain of the evidence on the ground. That is why in our amendment No. 180, which deals with locally determined improvement targets, we seek to give greater flexibility to make changes and amendments to those targets to reflect the changing situation on the ground. On local area agreements, I am grateful to the Ministers for having taken on board a number of points that were raised in Committee. I hope, and I reinforce as strongly as I can the message of my hon. Friend, that they will look again at the issue of probation trusts. All of us who have been involved in local government consider that important. In Bromley, as the London assembly and Metropolitan Police Authority member, I serve on the local crime and disorder reduction partnership, of which the probation service is a part. We are anxious to have the ability to involve the probation service much more widely in the overall local area agreements. I am glad to see that the Minister for Local Government seems to respond with some sympathy to that remark. That would build on the best practice in a number of places. The same applies to the voluntary sector. Our umbrella voluntary sector organisation, Community Links Bromley, is a valuable part of our local strategic partnership. I should like to make more progress in finding ways in which it can be linked into the local area agreements. It contributes a great deal and where there is good working, we ought to be able to encourage that and facilitate it. A practical and sensible set of issues is raised by the Local Government Information Unit in the briefing that a number of Members will have seen. Not only should there be a statutory obligation to co-operate, but we should be able to deliver that in practice. Fortunately, in my borough, people co-operate willingly and well, but the experience of many of us shows that in London and elsewhere the level of co-operation is patchy.